


The Good Soldier

by a_sparrows_fall



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Season/Series 01, Vague references to the Blue Carbuncle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-12
Updated: 2012-01-12
Packaged: 2018-10-02 11:09:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10216658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_sparrows_fall/pseuds/a_sparrows_fall
Summary: The end of the year is a time for reflection; John’s assessment of himself—through a prism of depression—is a bit different than Sherlock’s. Sherlock tries to get John to see things his way (obviously.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Ported from my old Livejournal and backdated. Beta'ed by MisanthropyRay and ThisPrettyWren.

Discovering the properties of things, physical and otherwise, has peripherally become of interest to John, simply by way of living with Sherlock Holmes.

December, for instance. December has obvious properties: cold, shortish days, contains holidays.

But beyond casual observation, December has other traits. Like edges. December is all edges. John had felt this to some degree for as long as he could remember. It was all angles, all jagged. The sharp crack of the end of the year, with so much still undone. The just-below-surface tension of shopping outings and family gatherings. Icicles pointing down sinisterly from eaves, as if water decided to become weaponised. Full of edges.

A flatmate that very loudly snapped at an ill and obviously bedraggled police officer for sneezing 15 feet away from a crime scene they were scouring for clues... well, that was a sharpness John got to enjoy year round.

Which is just one of many pieces of data that went into John's latest study and resultant finding: he concludes that personalities are not malleable.

Sherlock is a certain way. Driven regarding the work, but unreliable in every matter except the object of his focus. And at some point, the way he is had become an excuse for, well, the way he is. Cyclical logic. Because no one would dare (or perhaps more accurately, bother) to ask him to change at this point.

“You know Sherlock,” Lestrade frequently sighed when John would call him after his flatmate had gone missing for two days with no word, or simply got up and walked away from a suspect interview for no obviously discernible reason.

Everyone knows how Sherlock is. (Most of all John.)

And likewise, everyone knows how John is.

John is dependable. Sturdy. Normal. Safe.

The words had actually transcended from simply being terms applied by others, in John’s mind, to part of him. Absolutes. Black and white, as if on a textbook page: Properties of John H. Watson.

They aren’t bad things, he tries to reason with himself. Being steadfast. Faithful. Loyal. (“Very loyal,” Mycroft’s smug voice echoes in his brain.) Positive qualities, all.

They are also descriptors that one could apply to a golden retriever.

This hurts to admit, especially since the last person to call him a ‘pet’—

(No. Not thinking about that. Definitely not right now.)

John takes orders and asks for reasonable things in return. He doesn’t make demands. These things make him a good man. Don’t they?

No, they make him a good soldier. And John always was a good soldier, long before he enlisted.

He’s becoming tired of it. He’s becoming tired. It’s a slow constriction, the feeling he’s just now admitted has been drawing in with the days. Subtly wafting closer, like black curtains, but with the pressure, the tautness, of a tourniquet… or perhaps a noose.

(Oh, God, that was dramatic. Not the trait of Sherlock’s he would have liked to rub off on him, if any.)

He could change, he supposes. Tear up the textbook page and become… dynamic. Unpredictable. Reckless.

But if he did, would he still be John?

Perhaps more importantly, would it even help? Wouldn’t it just make that slight hint of pity behind Sally Donovan’s mockery more palpable? Wouldn’t it make his mum and Harry’s eyes crinkle even a bit more when they smiled at him? (Fuck, Harry. Pity from _Harry?_ She might not, but—God, no, not a risk worth taking.)

Fighting against it at this point wouldn’t make him dangerous. It would just make him desperate.

So it’s quite settled in his mind, then. Not malleable.

John is not remarkable. Very frequently, this gets him exactly what he wants in life, so it’s rarely a bother to him.

But occasionally, he wishes he were remarkable, no matter what it got him. Like today.

It’s a Sunday morning in December, and Sherlock is saying something about the makers of a particular kind of goose down coat, and a rare gem, and barking for John to accompany him as he follows his latest lead.

John is sitting at the table near the window, hands drawing warmth from the cup in front of him. Without turning, he says he doesn’t feel well, and tells Sherlock to go without him.

Sometime later, Sherlock leaves.

And now it’s sometime much later than that—the undrunk tea’s gone tepid, the light outside is changing the shapes of shadows, and John may have to concede that more than one hour has passed.

His eyes are still taking in the scene below through the window, though his brain is barely registering the data anymore. He should go out. Get some air. But the weight on his chest, and the sharpness outside...

John realises: this may be as bad as it’s ever been. 

And the days outside Sangin, after a night spent treating scraps of boys with limited supplies in the near pitch black through night vision goggles, when there was nothing to do but wait to see if a man's will to live could overcome the destruction of his body… Those days were… bad.

And the dreams—which amplified that post-screaming silence—were awful.

But he suspects, if he lets this continue, ignores it, tamps it down, this may be worse.

It doesn’t entirely register when Sherlock re-enters the flat, or approaches, or removes an object from his coat pocket.

John looks up when a small black notebook flops on the table in front of him.

“I make notes to help distinguish valid from invalid data,” says Sherlock. He is standing over John, coat and gloves on, the chill from the street still shimmering off of him. “But you can use this however you wish.”

“I don’t—”

“Your observations are valid. I thought committing them to paper - during cases, not just afterward in your... _blog_ —” he says this like he’s saying ‘disease,’ or rather, as a normal person would say ‘disease,’ “—might help remind you of that.”

John flips absently through the empty notebook, attempting to quell the rage already spiking in a column behind his sternum; raging is not desired behavior in a good soldier.

But he is not going to be Sherlock’s bloody secretary.

Sherlock is about to turn away, to plow on announcing some case notes, before John can tell him how much of his bloody secretary he’s not going to be. So John laughs his warning laugh, the I’m-not-sure-I-even-have-words-for-how-absurd-this-is laugh.

Sherlock meets his eyes at this, and John can distinctly see confusion, and then the completion of the thought on Sherlock’s face in the span of a second; that he’s offended John, and then why.

“No, no, John—“ he says, making a vertical slicing gesture with his hand, and then balling it into a fist, as if making a retraction without having to say so. A moment passes as he halts and completely reroutes the normally unstoppable juggernaut of his train of thought.

“I don’t tolerate people well,” Sherlock smirks—but gently—at how not-new this information is. “And certainly not a partner. And yet here you are. Which makes you unique.”

The full weight of the symbolism of a tiny bound collection of pages—one of the most important tools the detective uses – of what Sherlock is attempting to say (and, most importantly, that he is pausing, however briefly, in the middle of a case to say it) does not fully occur to John until much later.

Still, some of it must permeate immediately, instinctively. Being defined in terms of another person, especially the one person whose shadow he is constantly in, should be infuriating and insulting. But John can feel the corners of his mouth rising.

“‘The only one in the world.’”

“Precisely.”

“And you knew—” John hopes Sherlock will interrupt him again. Because the myriad ways that sentence could end suddenly splay out messily before John, and he finds he’s not keen to say any of them.

Fortunately Sherlock does not disappoint him.

“Nothing escapes my notice, John. Nothing.”

This is the most comforting threat John can ever remember hearing.

A moment passes. John shifts in his chair involuntarily; apparently whatever he's done with his face has signaled the result Sherlock desired, as Sherlock suddenly drops his focus from John completely and crosses to the kitchen, and John hears the clink of glass, a few frustrated huffs and some rummaging, and then a triumphant slam of a drawer.

“Now please stop being stroppy,” Sherlock says, somehow without a trace of irony. “It’s not like you to be useless. I’ll meet you at Covent Garden at 5pm, outside the Tube station—we may have to move on to Brixton later, but I’m hoping to avoid it.”

And he whirls out the door, back into December and edges, crime and danger, the cold air he’d brought in trailing behind him, as if to pull John along and out the door.

And John is genuinely grinning now.

Sherlock could have spouted platitudes at him, or been aggressive, or told him it was all in his head. And John would not have received it well. At all.

Except, he couldn’t have done those things. Because he’s Sherlock—Properties of Personalities, remember?—and Sherlock is only capable of being himself. And hell if the wanker wasn’t just what John needed right now.

He looks out the window again—actually _observes_ now—and sees Sherlock hailing a cab, and then pulling away.

And John thinks: maybe he isn’t attracted to dangerous things because he’s trying to outrun his safety. Maybe his safety draws the dangerous things in. Storms have eyes—the calm interior. And if Sherlock is the edges, then he might be the center. And it’s important that the center holds.

It’s just a theory, just a glint of an idea, it requires data—he has gleaned that much from his flatmate. But worth pursuing? Probably.

John slides the cold tea aside, grabs a pen from a coffee mug on the table containing several, opens the small notebook and pushes it against the flat surface, neatly creasing the first page to lay flat.

He writes.


End file.
